I have a student who plays in a local club, one game a week in one night. She has played in this tournament many times, but she has made very little progress.

There is a local chess school here that offers a league tournament, which is very popular. It's also one game a week in one night. I have not heard many that grow out of that league.

Playing a game is better than playing no game, but it also gives wrong impression to the parent, that "my child is playing tournament every week". With this impression, the parent will not actively search for another better tournament. They will go to that club week by week, be satisfied with the activity, but not the result. If you are a retiree, this is not bad. But if you are a fast-growing youngster, this is not good.

Some TDs report results week by week, while other TDs report results by combining multiple weeks. But you only get one practice chance every week.

Doing this doesn't save you any time, because you have to drive to the tournament every week. That night may be all for chess. Your child will have to make up his/her homework on other days. The total time might be much more than a tournament on weekends.

The big disadvantage of playing one game a week is that many players need time to warm up. They need one or two games to get into chess playing mode. Every time they get into mode, then they stop and go home. They have to re-start next week. But same thing might happen next week. We all know, chess is like war. It does not only depend on knowledge and skill, but also on morale and mood. If you have confidence, you could easily outperform yourself. For a kid, building that confidence is critical. This requires several games in one tournament in a short time span.

Yes, the book has all the answers. If you only want to check answers, you don't need me. If your child is a hard-working kid, who can verify his/her solutions by looking up in the back of the book and think hard if his/her solution is wrong, then you don't need me at all. Your child can outgrow the book very quickly.

But, unfortunately, most children are not like that. They need some help when they face some difficulty. They need someone who can lead the way, someone who can help them find clue, or maybe someone who can suffer along with them. It's very hard for a child go on a voyage by himself/herself alone. That's why you may need me.

I am not giving all the answers. In fact, I will still ask you to check them by yourself if you are not sure. What I want to help you is to have the confidence that you know your answer is correct most times. In a few situations, you know you still need think more. This confidence is critical for your child to play a real game. If you are not sure, you will start guessing. We all know what kind of result can be expected if you keep guessing. What I want to achieve is to remove guessing from your vocabulary. We need reason, even a wrong reason is better than guessing. Finding the reason is always our goal.

I will show you how to find clue when you face a never-seen problem or a kind-of-seen problem. A puzzle that gets into a book has a reason, because it has some patterns and has a solution. I will show you how to look for those clues. There are only 5-10 basic tactics we discuss in Step 2 or in any other tactics course, even you make combinations, the variety will be much less than 100. But there are hundreds, or even thousands of patterns. How to find them is not depending on guessing. We need some sure approaches. That's where I add values.

Laszlo Polgar's 5334 Chess Problems is a classic book. The 1100-page is thick and heavy. If you see a child is reading the book at a tournament site, you know he is serious about chess. Although the book only has 3 types of tactics problems, mate in one, mate in 2 and mate in 3, the tactics they require cover all areas. From the demo video, we can see that it uses many concepts we discussed in Steps Method.

The number of problems is so big that it requires at least one year to finish if we move super-fast. At our normal speed as I planned, we will take about 2 years. We are still not discussing everything. But the long term also matches the persistence required for chess progress.

Because it's only one book, it's easy for us to track progress and to focus our discussion. We are not doing interactive lessons, so focus is extremely important.

To compensate the lack of structure, I will mention about Steps concepts when we discuss the problems in 5334. I am publishing a sample schedule every week. If you are already ahead of the schedule, you can continue at your place and your pace, following my 2-year schedule. You can ask any question in 5334 at any time. Please include Page # and Problem #. I will try my best to answer in the weekly video. All videos will be kept at the course host:https://princetonchessacademy.teachable.com/p/5334-chess-problems-combinations-and-games

For my step 2 or up students, I send email notice every week to parents, to let them know where are the tournaments that weekend in NJ. I strongly encourage them to bring their child to tournaments. I try my best to arrange my higher level classes away from weekends, because that's when most tournaments happen.

The reason I sacrifice my class time and push them to tournaments are:

First, tournaments are where they apply and test the knowledge they learn. This is the only way they can master the skills solidly.

Second, tournament environment is much more serious than class environment. You don't know most of your opponents, and everyone wants to beat you. When you are serious, you think more and think better.

Third, winning a tournament is a big confidence booster. Your child will be much more interested in improving him/herself.

Fourth, playing in a tournament is also a small goal. If you perform well in small tournaments, you may go to state tournaments or nationals. All these goals are motivating your child to work hard. Without goals, where can you reach?

My best students are in Step 4 class. All of them are playing in the tournaments. I track all my students' tournament progress. If I see some previous students stop playing tournaments, I know I would lose track of him/her pretty soon. Very likely, s/he will stop playing chess completely.

I have taught a lot of kids and talked with a lot of parents. The foremost question from parents is: I don't know chess, how can I help my child? This is a challenge for both the parent and the child. It's also a challenge for me. As a coach, I can't see your child everyday. If your child attend my classes, I will see him/her once a week. That's the only time I can observe your child and give you some feedback.

The biggest problem for a child to stay with chess is studying chess everyday at home. Because they don't have anyone to ask at home when they have questions, they stop studying at home at all. Learning chess once a week is not enough. We learn Math everyday at school. We learn English everyday. We learn most subjects everyday. Chess is the same. You have to study it everyday. If you only touch chess once a week, you can't improve much. If you can't improve, then slowly you will lose interest. That's one reason we assign a lot of homework, so at least you have the opportunity to do a few problems everyday. We also suggest your child to play online everyday, and to go to tournaments if they are ready.

That's also the reason I am creating a new video course to mitigate the problem. We will work on a book together. If your child hit upon any problem, s/he can ask. I will record a video every week to answer questions. It's an ongoing course. My initial commitment is 2 years.

It's very good for a parent to introduce a child to chess. They share the same love, and have fun time together. In fact, when the child is young, age 4, 5, or 6, I really recommend parents to learn (if the parent doesn't know how to play chess yet) and teach their own kids.

But when the child needs to improve, it's totally a different story. I suggest you to send your child to another teacher or coach. It would be a nightmare if you try to be your child's own coach, even if you play chess well.

Let's assume that the parent knows chess well, maybe already a master, is it good for him/her to teach his/her own child? It's a NO.

First, children are not listening to parents, no matter how expert they are. It's much easier for a third party coach to tell the child what to do. It's same as school. Most kids will listen to their teachers, but not their parents.

Second, to make improvement, there will be inevitably a lot of criticisms. It's better to let the professional coach to deliver these criticisms. More efficient and less feeling hurt. The second part is in fact more important. Chess is not our destiny. From playing chess, we want to gain some benefits, no matter it's improving strategic thinking, improving concentration, or enhancing memory and abstract thinking. So we want to keep a close relationship with our child afterward. Acting as a coach in fact is counterproductive.

Third, most parents are not expert in chess. So teaching your child by yourself is like the blind men touching the elephant. It will take you a long time to figure out the correct approach, if you are lucky.

Therefore, seek for help, like in school, in sports, and in any other areas.

At school, we usually group students by age. In sports, we also group students by age. But in chess, age is not big factor. A 9-year old can be very strong, such as a National Master, beating all his peers and adults. Even for my students, a 6-year old student could be much more stronger than a 10-year old beginner. Therefore I can't determine your child's ability by age.

Knowing your child's age is important, because a 10-year old can understand things better than a 6-year old, so can catch up quickly. But it's not enough. I have to ask you his/her rating if s/he has played in tournaments, or how long has s/he learned. More important, I have to do an evaluation of him/her, to see his/her ability to handle chess games, his/her maturity, and etc. I offer the evaluation for free, so we could have a better picture of your child's ability before we put him/her into the correct step.The youngest GM record is 12, and the youngest USCF national master record is 9. If a child works really hard, s/he could achieve very high. So next time if you sit across a child, pray for your game.

Once a school district asked me to teach their students chess for 4 weeks. I said no. Chess is not a short term project. To pass the knowledge of chess and the passion for chess requires years of persistent study. Looking at all the chess kids, their growing up from 0 to 2200 takes at least 3 to 5 years. No one could become a chess master in a month.

Therefore, the schools and parents should keep a long term vision, thinking in years, not weeks. You can speed things up, if you work doubly hard. There is no shortcut in chess.

As long as s/he likes to learn chess and likes to play chess, 1, 2, or 3 hours are all fine. If s/he does not like to play chess, then 0 hour. Of course, the more time s/he puts in, the more s/he could achieve.

There is no genius in this world. All chess kids are smart. If you expect your child spends 10 minutes a day on chess and wins the national, you are dreaming. You can either find excuses for your child (and yourself) or help your child find time. There is no third way.

When I first taught chess, I had a student who couldn't stand losing to his classmates. He was so afraid of losing that he could not play in classroom at all. If he didn't play, of course he would not improve. Then he could never win.

So I gave him a challenge, playing on chesskid.com against other kids. I told him: "You don't know them, so don't worry, losing was not that bad. I don't care about results, winning or losing. In fact, I want you to lose. I want you lose 100 games first. I will give you a prize when you reach the goal".

Initially he still played very few games. Every week I reminded him the 100-loss goal. Slowly he got into the habit, losing more games every week. After couple of weeks, after losing 40-some games, he began to have some wins. He could no longer continue his loss stream. Winning games shown up more and more, and he became more confident to play. In half a year, he started to play in tournaments.